Rap star Ice Cube was on the Graham Norton show and was praised by British actor Hugh Laurie for his sensible attitude to the Oscars controversy.
The rapper-turned-actor was in Britain to promote his latest movie Ride Along 2 with Kevin Hart.
The pair were guests on the primetime BBC show along with British actress Olivia Coleman and House star Hugh Laurie.
Once the movie had been discussed, Norton asked Ice Cube what he thought about the Oscars controversy.
Many people in the film industry have criticised the Oscars this year as the nominees didn’t include any black actors.
Ice Cube’s film Straight Outta Compton was one of the movies featuring black performers that was snubbed by the committee.
Cube told Norton that he wouldn’t be attending the ceremony but then pointed out: “You can’t boycott something that you never went to anyway.”
He explained that although awards are nice to receive, they are not the reason he makes movies. He added that Straight Outta Compton had been widely praised by numerous critics and audiences and the Oscar snub was not something to dwell on.
The whole studio sat listening to Cube as he explained his views on the matter, and once he had finished Laurie complimented him saying: “By the way, that’s about the sanest description of this whole process of awards that I’ve ever heard, I mean as a way of treating it, as a way of thinking about it.”
The audience agreed and gave a round of applause to Ice Cube. Take a look at the video below.
Norton also asked Cube why he was given such a traditional Irish name (Ice Cube’s real name is O’Shea Jackson). Cube was unsure, so Kevin Hart took over the conversation with his own theory about why Cube’s mother had chosen to call her baby O’Shea. Take a look at the clip below.
